With the advent of distributed computing environments, users have become accustomed to being connected to friends, business associates, and a variety of information sources. With modern computing systems, users may connect to remote electronic mail servers, web servers, databases, and the like using a number of different connectivity means. In a home or office, a user may connect her computer to a distributed computing environment via a high bandwidth wire line connection through which the user may send and receive large amounts of data very quickly. Alternatively, the user may connect to a distributed computing environment via a low bandwidth dialup connection through which the user may send limited amounts of data at a much slower pace. If the user cannot connect via a wire line connection, the user may utilize a local wireless network in her office, school, or home. If the user leaves the wire line or local wireless network connection systems of her home, office, school, and the like, the user may nonetheless connect to the desired computing environment via a wide area network wireless system. Between the various connection sources, the user may temporarily be offline altogether.
Unfortunately, such movement between communications connectivity sources makes for a less than enjoyable user experience. Often electronic mail client applications are highly sensitive to such network changes, especially where speed and connection reliability varies greatly between different connectivity sources and methods.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system for allowing an electronic mail or other client application capable of online communication to sense changes in network speed and connectivity availability to allow the application to perform in a predictable manner across online and offline sessions and across varying connectivity speeds and reliability.